Air India defers part of July salary till August 20

Air India (A-I) has deferred the payment of productivity-linked incentives (PLI) to its employees for the month of July till August 20.

“The salaries would be paid on time, but the PLI payment would be delayed till August 20. June salaries and PLI were deferred by a fortnight,” a spokesperson said.

The cash-short airline, under government order to prepare a turnaround plan, has 31,500 employees and the yearly wage bill is over Rs 3,000 crore. Of that, around 45 per cent is the PLI.

The airline set up a committee last month to examine ways of reducing the wage bill by Rs 500 crore. At the lowest category of employees, the PLI constitutes 20 to 30 per cent of overall salary. For instance, a superintendent with a salary of around Rs 25,000 a month gets a monthly PLI of Rs 9,000 to 10,000. At the lowest level of a helper, with a salary of Rs 15,000 a month, the PLI is around Rs 2,000.

Also, almost the entire management-level cadre of the airline has agreed to forego their July salaries following an appeal by CMD Arvind Jadhav, who recently said deferring salary and incentive payment had become necessary for the survival of the airline.